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FOOD-WORK-OTHER INMATES-TATTOOS-GUARDS-CONDITIONS-KEEP IT CLEAN BUT REAL!
Prison inmate No. 43355-018, aka Wesley Snipes reports to prison As
Joran van der Sloot stood before a panel of three women judges in a Peruvian court, he looked confident — and bored
— just as he had two days earlier. He even smiled as a judge began reading his sentence. But, then, when the words “28 years” were read loud and clear, Joran’s demeanor suddenly
changed. He wiped the sweat from his brow as his eyes darted from side to side. And then he wiped tears from his eyes. Joran cried for himself, not for Stephany Flores, a young woman he has admitted to strangling in his hotel room after meeting her at a poker tournament
in Lima, Peru. This time in court, Joran was clearly
out of his comfort zone. The now-24 year old was spoiled as a kid. When, as a teenager, he became too unruly for his wealthy
parents to handle, they moved him into separate quarters on their property to keep him from harassing his two younger brothers. Earlier, in the days before his sentencing, Joran was able to stall the inevitable after telling the judges
he needed more time before he gave them his “sincere confession.” In Peru, when confessions are deemed “sincere,”
defendants are typically sentenced to less time. Not so for Joran, who’s
suspected of also killing teen Natalee Holloway after her disappearance on the Caribbean island of Aruba, where Van der Sloot grew up and where Natalee
had been vacationing with high school friends. He was given just two years less than the 30-year maximum sentence that had
been recommended to the court by his prosecutors. After his sentence was handed
down, Van der Sloot was transferred to the high-security Piedras Gordas penitentiary in northern Lima from the Castro Castro
prison where he’d been housed before and where it had been been reported that he was enjoying special privileges of
Internet access, TV, and cellphone use. Apparently, that won’t be the case
at the Piedras Gordas prison, where Joran is expected to serve out his time in less than desirable conditions until the year
2038. So be it. FACEBOOK / CELL PHONE IN PRISON?
U.S. SUPREME COURT HEAR PRISON LAWSUIT At issue during Tuesday’s hearing is the medical and mental health care delivered
to inmates in the nation’s largest state prison system. Eighteen
other states have joined Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s administration in urging the justices to reject the order as overreaching
and arguing that it poses a threat to public safety. Attorneys general elsewhere fear they could face similar legal challenges
if the decision survives. A 2005 ruling by a federal judge in
San Francisco found that an average of one inmate per week was dying in California prisons as a result of medical neglect
or malfeasance. The prison health care system has been judged so poor that the federal courts have found it violates the constitutional
rights of inmates. Last year, a three-judge panel of the 9th
Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that reducing the inmate population by about 40,000 inmates is the only way to improve medical
and mental health care. California has been fighting lawsuits
over its treatment of inmates for two decades, but this is the first time the battle has reached the nation’s high court.
It is also the first time the justices will consider a prisoner release order in any state under a 1996 federal law that governs
judges’ actions in inmates rights cases. The Supreme Court
agreed to hear the state’s argument that the three judges overstepped their authority. Specifically, the judicial panel
gave California two years to trim the population of the state’s 33 adult prisons to about 110,000 inmates. More than
144,000 inmates are now in the prisons, which were designed to hold about 80,000. The
judges’ order “represents the highest level of federal court interference with state prison management and fails
to take into account the adverse effects it will have on public safety,” Andrea Hoch, Schwarzenegger’s legal affairs
secretary, said in a statement this week. “This appeal is important to preserve the state’s rights to operate
its criminal justice system.” The administration says conditions
have improved as it gradually reduces crowding and improves care. California
has been lowering the prisons’ population through changes in parole and sentencing policies that free some ex-convicts
from supervision and by sending about 10,000 inmates to private prisons in other states. Another 5,000 have been authorized
for transfer out of state. Separately, the state has clashed
with a federal judge who appointed a receiver in 2006 to oversee all aspects of California’s prison health care system. The receiver has more than doubled the prisons’ annual medical budget from $707 million
to $1.5 billion, hired more medical staff and increased salaries. The receiver reported 46 inmate deaths last year that might
have been prevented or delayed with better medical care. That was an improvement from 66 preventable deaths in 2008 and 2006,
and 68 in 2007. Attorney General Jerry Brown, who will become
governor in January, has said the receiver’s demands constitute a threat to state sovereignty and that California should
be protected from a federal court raid of the state’s budget. Attorneys
representing inmates counter that conditions remain in a crisis state despite the steps taken by the state and the court-appointed
health care receiver. “It’s an enormously important
case,” said Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the University of California, Irvine School of Law, who is not representing any
party in the ongoing court battles. “The reality is that the California prisons are desperately overcrowded, and as
a result prisoners receive grossly inadequate medical care. The question then is, what can the federal courts do about it?” He said the Supreme Court’s ruling may hinge on whether the judges successfully followed
a complex federal law that lets courts order the early release of inmates only if a special judicial panel decides all other
options have been exhausted. The state said in its written argument
to the court that the creation of the three-judge panel and its order violate the 1996 Prison Litigation Reform Act. The state contests the judges’ ruling that overcrowding was the primary cause of the
health care deficiencies, or that reducing the number of inmates would solve the problems. The state’s lawyers say the judges could have helped mentally and physically ill inmates without
such a sweeping order. Releasing inmates will jeopardize the public unless the state invests in rehabilitation programs it
cannot afford as it faces a $25 billion budget gap over the next 18 months, the state contends. Inmates’ rights attorneys say the three judges had no choice after the state ignored
or violated more than 70 court orders since a lawsuit challenging prisons’ medical care was filed in 1990. Most of the evidence favors the inmates, but conservative justices will be reluctant to intervene
in state decisions, said Frank Zimring, a University of California, Berkeley law professor who has studied California prisons
for nearly 30 years. The pending Supreme Court decision will
help determine how the 1996 federal law is applied nationwide when judges see constitutional violations, although no other
state appears to have prison problems as severe as California, said Amy Fettig, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties
Union’s National Prison Project. Louisiana Attorney General
Buddy Caldwell filed a friend of the court brief supporting California on behalf of the other 18 states, including Colorado,
Illinois, Pennsylvania and Texas. Other states have a substantial interest because they also could face lawsuits seeking to
force large-scale prisoner releases, Caldwell said in the brief. “States
like Louisiana must make difficult decisions about their correctional systems every day, and they must be given flexibility
by the federal courts in the face of tight budgets and growing prison populations,” Caldwell’s appellate chief,
Kyle Duncan, said in a statement. Even as the administration
appeals the order, Schwarzenegger has long recognized the dangers of crowding and taken steps to create space, said Don Specter,
who as director of the nonprofit Berkeley-based Prison Law Office will argue the case on behalf of inmates. “I’m not sure why the state is taking the position it is and fighting it so hard
when there is consensus this is the main barrier that has to be resolved before things can get better,” Specter said. If the ruling is upheld, the state will have two years to act once the final order takes
effect. The administration has said meeting the judges’
deadline would require California to keep criminals convicted of drug possession, receiving stolen property, theft and check
fraud in county jails instead of state prisons. Some lower-risk inmates would serve the last 12 months of their sentences
under house arrest enforced by satellite-linked ankle bracelets tracking their movements. Several of the changes would require modifications in state laws and would burden counties already
dealing with crowded jails and dwindling budgets, the administration said. PRISONABILIA MUG SHOTS
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